Black Album Coming Sooner

A copy of what’s supposed to be Jay-Z’s last LP has made its way onto the Internet, so Roc-A-Fella has moved the album’s release date up two weeks, from November 28 to November 14.
“They’re at it again,” Jay said Wednesday (November 5) with a smile while visiting the offices of MTV. “They’re getting better.”

It’s not that Jay is elated that his last project has been floating around in the hands of music pirates, he’s just taking it in stride. After all, he’s been there before. Young Hov did admit that he was a little heated upon hearing of the bootlegging, but has had a chance to digest the situation.

“I’m so used to it,” he said. “It’s like you plan to do one thing, then you just gotta go to plan B. For a second I was like, ‘This is wack. Every time?’

“But it’s good though,” he continued, putting everything in perspective. “I’ve made 13 albums to this point. So to still be relevant like that and to still be hot in the streets is a good thing. If the project ain’t hot, you might not get bootlegged at all.”

Jay blamed the theft of his music on a security breakdown at the plant where it’s sent to be pressed.

“Once it hits the plant you have no control over it,” he explained. “If they want it, they get it. It touches too many hands not to get it.”

Jay said that while the pirating has hurt the album’s set-up, he has a few tricks up his Roc-A-Wear sleeve so sales don’t slack. Like Obie Trice and the G-Unit, he too is including three golden tickets in three different copies of The Black Album .

“I got a golden ticket giveaway going on too,” Jigga explained. “I got three Mercedes Benzes, not one, not two … three Mercedes. They can’t get the Maybach, let’s not get crazy, but it’s something nice though. I did something with Mercedes where they used some of my lyrics in their ads, so I already had some dealings with them. The album was coming up and I was like, ‘Give me three of those joints, let the people have them.’ That’s how simple it was.”

As second-place prizes, Jay is giving away 10 books with all his lyrics printed in them.

With a new November 14 date for his record, Hov is still looking toward the end of the month. There’s that little matter of his November 25 concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden, where he promises to bring out some big-name surprise guests.

“I’m about to get into heavy preparations,” Jay said. “Right now I’m just going through the show list. There’s some songs that I wanna do that I haven’t performed in years.”